“HERETICAL PLAGUES”: A MARTIN NESVIG ESSAY

 

 

Published in Church History 75, Martin Nesvig’s essay “‘Heretical Plagues’ and Censorship Cordons: Colonial Mexico and the Transatlantic Book Trade” refers to the trial against English and French corsairs that served to alert the merchants and pirates bringing Lutheran and Calvinist literature into Mexico. The mere idea of having the Bible translated into vernacular languages was considered a plague that could infect the Catholic conquest of the transatlantic world. As Nesvig affirms, many of the heretics were interrogated by the inquisitors about books suspiciously translated into English, with inherent religious value (2). Here the author highlights the importance of censorship as an indispensable condition to sustain religious orthodoxy. Nesvig’s essay analyzes the theoretical body that helps us understand the ways in which the Index of Prohibited Books issued by the Spanish Inquisition was put into effect as well as its daily application in Colonial Mexico (2).

The essay is structured into subchapters that present a rigorous account of the theories of censorship. Inquisitors, says Nesvig, were always understood as having superior authority under the law, regulating books and their circulation (3). They carried on the task of prohibiting books from being spread out throughout the public domain. As the author affirms, the dissemination of power in the form of censorship resulted in somewhat of an idiosyncratic power (Nesvig 4). The first sub-chapter of the essay presents the way in which certain books became “a heretical plague,” linking people’s suffering from real illnesses to the practice of non-orthodox religious ideas. For instance, Calvin’s illnesses in the last years of his life were viewed as resulting from the dangerous and contagious heretical plague (Nesvig 6). As Nesvig states, one becomes a heretic through the exposure to incorrect ideas (7). Francisco Peña and Diego de Covarrubias were two of the theorists who provided commentary on the infection metaphor as it related to heterodoxy and heretical books (Nesvig 9). Others, like Alfonso de Castro, presented accounts that saw the translation of Scripture into the vernacular as one of the major causes of heresy and “disease” contamination.

The circulation of books, the entrance of foreigners, and the transatlantic circulation of ideas were some of the main every-day practices connected to the inquisitional prosecution in the XVI Mexico (Nesvig 11). According to Nesvig, while the Crown regulated the licensing of print, the inquisition laid claim to censor any book suspected to be contaminated after its publication (13). The inquisitive “comisarios” held the power even to excommunicate people from the Catholic realms, resulting in the loss of the sacraments (Nesvig 14). Yet, censorship efforts were limited to specific cases of volumes written and/or published in Mexico like Juan de Zumárraga’s book containing the idea that the blood of Jesus had been absorbed by the wood of the Cross (Nesvig 16-19). The Scriptures seemed to have been a common work removed from owners, and Erasmus was considered the most confiscated individual author (21-22). Nesvig calls our attention to the fact that the enforcement of the Index varied from one city to another, depending on the level of corruption of the inquisitive comisarios (28). There were places, however, such as Zacatecas and Guatemala, with great defenders and enforcers of the law (30).

Nesvig offers a conclusion that has powerful remarks. He says that cultural exigencies associated with the very common thought of “obedezco pero no cumplo,” which reminds us of “Do what I say, not what I do” played a role in the application of the Index. When the inquisitors saw themselves as practitioners of law and colonial authority, they failed to convince people how the prohibition of books was a necessary vehicle to protect Catholicism (34-37).